I'm participating in my first-ever actual Event on Facebook! The Fantastical Reads Event starts Feb. 1, continues through Feb. 8 and features giveaways and the opportunity to meet up with a great group of writers. I feel like I'm in stellar company with the likes of M.E. Lord, Elise Stokes, David C. Cassidy ... eight writers in all with an awesome lineup of books.

I'll be giving away free copies of all four of the books in my Portals urban fantasy/detective/light romance series: two copies of Shadow Path, featured on the poster. One copy each of Stormcaller and Deathtalker, books 2 and 3 in the series. And two copies of Sister Hoods, book 4 in the series, released just last fall. In addition, Sister Hoods - which is currently priced at $5.99 - will be available for $4.99 next week.

My hope is that, during the coming week, I'll be able to host some of my fellow-
Fantastical Reads authors here on my blog, and post excerpts from their featured books. If you'd like to see what the event's all about, here's a link: https://www.facebook.com/events/205889079615386/208999475971013/ (At least I hope it will work; as my friends already know, I'm notoriously low-tech and inept about this stuff ...)

But I am hugely jazzed about this event, and it's exciting for me just to be among these folks! So I hope you'll stop by (or find us, if that link doesn't work). Just remember
Feb. 1-8, and check us out!

Okay … yes … I am excited. I have the release
date from my publisher for the ebook version Sister Hoods – book 4 in my
Portals urban fantasy/detective/romance series. October 31 – Halloween! I love
it!

A “few” details remain to be completed. My
publisher – Studio See Publishing LLC – is still working on cover art. Fortunately, she's still amused by me calling her every single day to ask, “Is it ready yet?”

I have a very understanding publisher. She
realizes that I am at least borderline OCD as well as weird, and that I am turning into a puddle of anxiety as the release date draws closer …

Heck, she was even okay with me making some significant changes between Sister Hoods, the ebook, and Sister Hoods, the print version – including a new ending … And, by the way, if you've read the print version, I hope you'll get the ebook because it changes
the dynamics a lot between my main characters, human Kat Morales and her elf partner, Tevis.

 And – just a hint – here's the blurb from the upcoming Sister Hoods:

A bank robbery in Rockport, Texas, sends Corpus Christi police detective Kat Morales and her elf partner, Tevis, in pursuit of a band of nymphs and satyrs. The answer to their initial question – why nymphs and satyrs would rob a bank – only leads them into a deeper mystery in an enchanted woodland on the South Texas coast. And while he and Kat try to save the woods from an evil wizard and a deadly wyvern, Tevis finds himself engaged in a personal struggle with potentially disastrous consequences: He is deeply,
irrevocably in love with his partner …

So … coming Oct. 31 – Halloween – to a Kindle and Nook near you … Sister Hoods, the ebook.

One of the banes of writing is the dread Writer's Block. That point at which everything in your book comes to a screeching halt while you struggle with the terrifying question:

 What Comes Next?

On those occasions when I hit the end of a scene – and find myself wondering where to go from there – I frequently turn to my
villain and ask, “What are you doing?”

Especially in my Portals books – a mix of urban fantasy with police procedural with romance – a lot of the plot is action/reaction. A crime is committed. My main characters, Kat Morales, her elf sidekick Tevis and their allies, step in to investigate. The perpetrator moves on to whatever he/she intends to do next …

For me, knowing what the villain – the antagonist – is doing is as critical as knowing what my protagonists are up to.

You don't have to write scenes from your antagonist's point of view – although I've done that in my more recent Portals books, and it can be a heap o' fun! But … I think … you need to have an idea of what that individual is doing, and whether you can use his/her
actions to bring your protagonists either closer to enlightenment or deeper into a swamp of confusion.

I'm a pantser in my writing style: I get a flash of an image in my head, a bare germ of an idea, and I sit down and start writing chapter 1. But at some point past that first burst of writing energy, I start thinking about the back story. Why has this happened? Who is the perp? I start getting a handle on the villain.

Sometimes that isn't immediately obvious. Sister Hoods, book 4 of my series – soon to be released as an ebook – starts with a bank robbery committed by a band of Nymphs and Satyrs. That leads to the question of why Nymphs and Satyrs would rob a bank …

And that leads to the discovery (yeah, us pantsers have to learn these things the same way as our readers) that the Nymphs and Satyrs aren't, in fact, the villains. They're just trying to save their home …

 That brings up the question of who the real villain is, and what he's after …

For me, the plot of a book is a kind of dance, all of the characters revolving around each other in moves that can be as deceptively simple as a waltz, as intricate as a ballet, or a complicated mix of steps that pull first one way, then another. Sometimes the dancers move seemingly independent of each other, but they are always bound to one another,
their position on stage dictated in part by their relationship to the other dancers.

 That's what helps me when I get stuck in a plot. What's the villain up to? The answer nearly always leads to new discoveries.

Not long ago, I saw this question on a writer's forum: “I want to be an author. What do I write about?”

Okay … First – in my humble opinion – if
you don't know what you want to write about, you're not ready to become a
writer, let alone an author.

  Writing is an intensely personal experience. If you're going to connect with a reader in any kind of meaningful way, what you
write has to come from the heart – your heart, not someone else's. I can't tell you what your book should be about any more than I could have told Picasso what to paint.

  It's easy these days to do a little research and find out what types of books are hot commodities among readers. So, all you have to do is check the bestseller lists, write your own book on the current hot topic (vampire love, zombie apocalypse, erotic romance) and – Presto! People will flock to buy your book too. Right?

  Wrong.

  Unless you're an avid reader of this kind of book yourself, unless this is the kind of book you already are dying to write, you've probably doomed yourself to failure.

  My Portals fantasy/detective series, for example, started because I had this character in my head  … He happened to be an elf, and he happened to be a police detective. And at that point, I had to figure out what kind of book I needed to write to accommodate him.


But my “what kind of book” questions weren't about what is, or isn't, selling. They were about the kind of books – and movies and TV shows, for that matter – that I enjoy reading and watching. The Portals books blend a lifelong love of folklore, mythology and fantasy with decades of reading crime novels, plus more recent fascination with the CSI shows on TV.

  In fact, my original plans were for the book series to be a bit heavier on forensics – another interest of mine. But that idea was short-circuited when Tevis (the elf detective who started this whole thing) showed that he could See how someone died just by laying hands on the victim …

But the books are an outgrowth, and a reflection, of my personal interests, my reading (and movie and TV) tastes. For better or worse, they come from my heart.

  All the books that I've read and truly enjoyed have started that way. I can't imagine, for example, JRR Tolkien doing market research before sitting down to write Lord of the Rings. (If he had, in fact, those books might never have been written.) Nor can I envision Hemingway asking around before embarking on such classics as The Sun Also Rises or
For Whom the Bell Tolls.

  It's hard – pretty much impossible – to write about something that doesn't already interest you. Trust me … Readers know the difference between a writer who's actively engaged in the book, a writer who is passionate about her characters and storyline, and one who isn't.

  Writers of fiction continue the ancient art of story-telling. It's just that we set into words the kinds of tales that our ancestors told around campfires in the evenings. And if you, the writer, aren't passionate about the story you're telling, why should I be as a reader? The question isn't “What kind of book should I write?” but …

  “What's the story that I want to tell?”

This past Sunday was a true “fun day” – a trip to the Big Horn Equestrian Center just 14 miles southwest of Sheridan, WY, to
watch one of this summer's polo matches. Players mounted on truly awesome
horses, chasing a little white ball around a green field with the Big Horn
Mountains as a spectacular backdrop –

Really, what more could you ask for an hour or so of entertainment? As a dedicated horse enthusiast, I'd rather watch polo than
football or baseball any day of the week.

  Originating 4,000 years ago in central Asia – originally to simulate battle scenarios and train men in the mastery of combat on horseback – polo reportedly came to the United States by way of the British cavalry.

  It came to the Sheridan area in the 1890s, when brothers Malcolm and William Moncreiffe, from Scotland, moved to the Big Horn, WY, area and began buying horses for the British army. Nearly 20,000 horses were reportedly shipped from Big Horn to Africa for use in the Boer Wars.

  Malcolm Moncreiffe reportedly built, in 1898, one of the first polo fields west of the Mississippi River. His Polo Ranch was the focus of polo games in the area until the ranch was sold in the early 1980s, and the games moved to the Big Horn Equestrian Center.

  Polo is as popular as ever around here, and the summer games draw players from all over the world – including Argentina – who come not only to play but to buy horses raised and trained in the Big Horn area. There is no specific breed of polo pony. Many of them are crosses of Thoroughbred, quarter horse and other equine breeds. The term “pony” in fact is a misnomer, harking back, according to polo historians, to a time long past when no horse taller than 13.2 hands (54 inches) at the withers was allowed in the
game.

  That height, 13.2 hands (a “hand” is 4 inches) is the dividing line between ponies and horses. But the term stuck, and today's polo horses – which may measure 15 hands (5 feet) or taller – are still called “ponies.” What I love about the game is that it isn't about players who just happen to be on horseback. The pony is a critical element of the game, a
component with a mind of its own. A good polo pony learns to follow the ball, and can actually set its rider up for those winning shots or blocks.

  According to sportpolo.com – one of many sites devoted to the game – “Next to a player's skills, the polo pony is the most important factor in polo.”

Big Horn polo ponies are acknowledged to be some of the best around.

  If you happen to be in the area, polo games are played pretty much every Sunday afternoon during the summer at the Big Horn Equestrian Center, and on Saturdays, July through August, at the Flying H Ranch, also in Big Horn. You can find schedules on the Internet.

  As for me, I'm planning on attending at least another game or two this summer. Admission is free (at least to the Equestrian Center, not sure about the Flying H).

  And don't be surprised if polo crops up in at least one of my Portals urban fantasy/suspense books …

Maybe a pooka masquerading as a polo pony ...

  As the frog said to his friends, Time's sure fun when you're having flies.

Well, time has definitely gotten away from me the past couple of weeks, and I'm not sure yet whether I've got a good handle on the situation.

But there's good stuff happening!

I'm wearing a new hat these days – not instead of but in addition to my book-writing. I'm back doing reporter-type stuff for a new online publication …

The Sheridan Scene (http://www.thesheridanscene.com), currently Internet-only, focuses on the city of Sheridan, Wyoming – where I've lived for more than 25 years. It's a mini-newspaper/news blog (with some opinion pieces as well) aimed at providing comprehensive news coverage online (and, so far, free) for residents of Sheridan County, Wyoming – including the city of Sheridan, towns of Dayton, Ranchester and Clearmont, and points in between.

In the meantime, Studio See Publishing LLC – publisher of my Portals urban fantasy/suspense series – has commissioned new photos for my book covers. Over time (but hopefully soon), all of the books will have new covers that tie the series together. (Boy am I awaiting those!!!!)

As soon as my publisher gives permission, I will start revealing some of the new cover images.

I'm also plugging away at rewriting Sister Hoods, book 4 in the series, for ebook release. The rewrite is a significant revamp of the print version, so if you've already read the print version – be prepared for some major changes.

The first three books in the series – Shadow Path, Stormcaller and Deathtalker – have all been well-received (got some pretty decent reviews), so I'm happy about that.

And … just for the fun of it … today I've posted a photo of my “jackrabbit terror” – one of the trio of furry K-9 kids that I share my life with.

  The Wizard who features so prominently in JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings is a “wand elf.”

That's the meaning of “Gandalf” in old Norse.

Since I've started writing my Portals books – a blend of police procedural and our own folklore and mythology – I've become intrigued by how many modern names, and words, are rooted in our ancestors' beliefs in elves, faeries and other magical beings.

My own grandfather's name was Aubrey – derived from two Germanic words that meant “elf” and “ruler.” Aha! I'm a descendant of a ruler of elves!

If you're named Alvin, or Alvina, you're an “elf friend” - from the Latin “Alvinius.”

Alfred E. Neuman of “Mad” Magazine fame? His name is from Old English and has been interpreted as “elf counsel” or “magical counsel.”

Oliver, from the French Olivier, is believed to come from Germanic Alfihar – “elf army.”

But the belief in these supernatural beings has entered our everyday vocabulary too.

Sudden, inexplicable illnesses of people or animals were once attributed to the person or animal being “elf shot” – wounded by an arrow or bolt shot by elves or some other fae being.

A person who's “pixilated” – slightly eccentric, whimsical, or under the influence – is being “pixie-led,” drawn astray by the pixies.

The puca, a mischievous, sometimes dangerous nature spirit in English folklore, gives us the term “puckish” for someone who's mischievous or, possibly, devilish.

From Greek and Roman myth, we get such words as “herculean,” meaning something that requires great strength or tremendous effort to achieve. The origin is with Hercules, son of Zeus (or Jove, the Roman equivalent) and a mortal woman, a demigod perhaps best-noted for performing 12 impossible labors.

From the fifth of those labors – cleaning the Augean Stables in a single day – comes another word still in use today: “Augean” now means any task that is difficult and unpleasant.

The link between myth (or folklore) and modern-day words isn't always obvious – and I love to discover new ones. There's “oaf,” for example. That's from the Old Norse “alfr” – an elf. The word originally meant someone who was rendered clumsy or stupid by elven enchantment, or – at least as early as the 1620s – a changling, a “foolish child” left by faeries in exchange for a human mother's own infant.

And … I've never associated Napoleon with the dwarves of Norse (or Germanic) mythology, but some etymologists now say there's a connection.

Rather than the origin of the name being in Naples, they say, the name may come from the Germanic “Nibelungen” – a race of subterranean dwarves who hoarded an immense treasure of gold and jewels.

I love to collect this kind of lore, so any of you who know other names or words that derive from our folklore … Please come share!

Thanks!

  Call them fairy rings, fairy circles, elf rings (or circles), pixie rings …

They are magical places that mark – or are created by – the dancing of the “fair folk” on moonlit nights.

So say the legends.

Fairy rings can be found across the world, most often in forests, but they can also appear in grass- or rangelands. The rings or arcs of mushrooms vary in size, but they can survive hundreds of years and get to be huge. One of the largest – near Belfort, in France – is reported to be around 2,000 feet in diameter, and about 700 years old.

Elves, faeries and pixies aren't the only supernatural beings that they're associated with, either. In France, they've been called ronds de sorciers – sorcerers' rings – and in Germany, they're hexenringe (witches' rings).
In Tyrol, it was believed they're created by the fiery tails of flying dragons. And once a dragon had created such a ring, nothing would grow there for seven years.

Folklore is also full of warnings about entering such a magical circle. Tradition in France held that they were guarded by giant bug-eyed toads that would curse anyone who entered them. Elsewhere across Europe, a person who entered a ring would lose an eye, or die at a young age.

A Somerset tradition holds that a murderer or thief who steps into a fairy ring will be hanged.

To destroy a fairy ring brings bad luck.

It's equally dangerous to enter a fairy ring when the faeries are there. A mortal can be trapped inside the ring, forced to dance to the point of exhaustion, death or insanity. In the British Isles, the fae folk actively try to lure mortals into their circle – and those so trapped can't escape on their own. Help can only come from the outside.

Rescuing someone from a fairy ring can be as simple as catching hold of the victim and pulling him out – but it more often requires some magical means, such as throwing certain herbs into the ring or touching the victim with cold iron. Iron is inimical to magic and a ward against the fae and their enchantments.

Yet even when rescued, the mortal victim of the fae may not be safe. During what seems like minutes or hours inside a fairy ring, weeks or years may pass in the world outside. Legends tell of victims who crumble into dust the instant they emerge from the ring … or die of great age after their first bite of food in the mortal world.

On a more beneficial side, Welsh tradition holds that mountain sheep who eat the grass of a fairy ring flourish, and crops sown in that magical place will be more bountiful than elsewhere.

Other legends hold that fairy rings are gateways to the magical realms of the fae – a legend that I've drawn on in my Portals urban fantasy/detective series. In my mind, these rings mark the ancient sites of Portals between our human world and the Realms of Magic which are home to all of the beings of our folklore and mythology.

Science, of course, has a more prosaic explanation of fairy rings – that certain species of mushrooms simply tend to grow in rings, arcs – even other shapes including double arcs and sickle-shaped arcs. In fact, about 60 species of ring-producing mushrooms have been identified.

I prefer the magical explanations, the image of elves and other fae coming and going and dancing in the rings in moonlight.

What do you think?

  As recently as 2011, the downfall of Irish businessman Sean Quinn – who went from being the richest man in Ireland in 2008 to declaring bankruptcy in 2011 – was the result, according to at least one of his neighbors, of his moving a fairy fort.

Fairy forts – also called fairy mounds and fairy raths – can be found scattered across Ireland and Scotland, and in the folklore of the British Isles, they're the home of the sidhe – the ancient gods of those nations, who diminished and became the Good Folk or Fair Folk, the Celtic equivalent of the French fae (which is the root of the English “faerie” or “fairy”).

In Irish and Scottish mythology, these folk variously were said to live underground in fairy mounds (or forts), across the western sea, or in an invisible world that coexists with the world of humans.

In JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth mythos, the lands of the elves are in the West – and it is to these lands that the elves retreat, as described in Tolkien's epic Lord of the Rings, at the end of the Third Age when the elves and their power in Middle Earth diminish.

For my Portals urban fantasy/suspense books, I've borrowed from the Irish/Scottish concept that the fae are native to a realm separate from our own. In the Portals mythos, this land is the Realms of Magic, a parallel world that contains all of the creatures of our human mythologies and folklore – elves, wizards, pixies, dragons, ogres, trolls …

In the Portals universe, as I've envisioned it, the fairy mounds are gateways between the Realms of Magic and our human world.

Tradition holds that the mounds in particular are imbued with the powerful magic of the druids, and that to disturb them is to invite disaster. Folklore offers many tales of people who suffered bad luck, illness, injury or even death because they disturbed a fairy mound.

That, says a one-time neighbor of Quinn's in the town of Ballyconnell, is what happened to Quinn.

In 1992, Quinn Concrete, one of Quinn's business ventures, moved the Wedge Tomb, a megalithic burial tomb that had stood for 4,000 years in Ireland's Aughrim townland, two miles from Ballyconnell. The goal for the concrete company was to expand a quarry.

Financial experts said the loss of his $8 billion business empire was due to Quinn's decision to gamble on Anglo Irish Bank shares.

But the Fair Folk work in most mysterious ways, and who's to say whether Sean Quinn staked his empire on bank shares because he thought, at the time, it would be a good idea …

Or whether it came, perhaps through dreams in the middle of the night, from some one or some thing that resented having its ancient home disturbed ...